


Bean Around the Block

by Sylvesterelle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Coffee Shops, Flirting, Fluff, Getting Together, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, M/M, because the boys are smart and good, flirting via film & lit, for no other reason than I WANT TO okay, this is just an excuse for some cute banter okay, vegan derek hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 15:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16704967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvesterelle/pseuds/Sylvesterelle
Summary: In which Derek likes soy lattes, Stiles likes Derek, and everyone hates Ezra Pound.





	Bean Around the Block

**Author's Note:**

> It's Thanksgiving break which means I can stay up until 3 to write cute coffee shop banter if I want to!! Also I've never read film scholar!Derek before but am weirdly into it. This may be niche. 
> 
> Only other things to note - in this AU Lydia is still a banshee and that's how Stiles got into the supernatural, but neither Laura nor Derek ever returned to Beacon Hills - instead going on with their lives (feat. a hefty dose of therapy).
> 
> Enjoy!!

Stiles sat sprawled across his favourite corner table in the 24-hour cafe on fifth street, the one equidistant between campus and his apartment, close enough to have prices to suit the student crowd, but far enough away that he doesn’t have to strong-arm anyone into giving up a window seat (which, coincidentally, is exactly how he managed to get kicked out of the slightly more convenient Starbucks located on his block. Allegedly.). But if anyone asks, it’s the location and the window seat that keeps drawing him back - the small table nestled up against giant picture windows that let the grey half-light of winter stream in and illuminate the brushed metal of the table and chairs. The cafe boasted an Ikea-by-way-of-2200, if the bare industrialism of the exposed ceiling and sleek metal fixings were anything to go by. It was a bit _Space Odyssey_ for Stiles’ taste, but the coffee was cheap, the music was good, and there was always a pun-based special-of-the-day that, more often than not, had him cracking a smile before his 8 a.m. Monday lecture.

There was also, admittedly, the lure of the TDS.

Stiles remembers the first day he saw him, crystal clear like only the most important memories are. It was a moment he knew he’d remember for the rest of his life, like when Scott offered him a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich in kindergarten, or the first time he saw Lydia Martin’s strawberry blonde hair three places ahead of him in the lunch line.

 _This one_ , he thought as he stared at the man, sitting there with his coffee like he didn’t have a care in the world, like he wasn’t upending Stiles’ entire world with every sip. _This one is mine._

He had bumbled his way through ordering, slid into the first seat he came across. Didn’t even _glance_ at his usual table – as far as he was concerned, he was content to drop anchor, hoist the flag, and colonize this seat for the rest of his life as long as it meant a direct view of the man later known as Tall, Dark, and Soy Latte. (It’d been Tall, Dark, and Handsome until the third week, when Stiles happened to walk in in time to hear him order.  It was just so _cute,_ and when he ordered the vegan pumpkin muffin to go with? Stiles could admit he had a problem, alright.

“Jesus, just _talk_ to him,” Lydia groaned, her exasperation carrying through the tinny laptop speakers. “As someone with first-hand experience, believe me when I say there is _nothing_ romantic about your stare. I’ve seen saner looking corpses.”

Lydia had shocked everyone when she turned down her full-ride to MIT to pursue forensic science at the University of Tennessee – home of the world’s largest body farm. Her reasoning was she was going to find the bodies anyway; might as well be able to figure out how they died. Besides, she had said, she’d have plenty of time in her off-hours to publish on Chaos Theory. And, as Stiles was oh-so-aware, plenty of time to nose into his dating life – or lack thereof, as it happened.

“Seriously,” she said with her trademark withering stare, no less fierce through the pixelated image. “If you don’t make a move before Christmas, I will fly down there and take care of it myself.”

“Oh how I wish you would,” Stiles said, dragging his hands over his face with a groan. “This finals season is going to _kill_ me and I could use that beautiful brain of yours. Who in the hell decided I should triple-major?”

Lydia smirked, not entirely unkindly. “You, if memory serves. And that 12-page dossier you handed to the Humanities dean the first week you were on campus.”

“I was young! I was innocent! I didn’t know the ways of the world!”

Lydia snorted. “Ok, that’s enough stalling for you. Get back to work, and I don’t want to hear from you again until it’s finished, understood?”

 “Roger, Roger,” Stiles said with a mock-salute. “Catch you on the flip side, light-of-my-life. My heart will pine until I may see your face again!”

“Love you too idiot,” Lydia said with an eye-roll before she exited the call, leaving Stiles to stare at his reflection in the too-black screen. God, he looked haggard.  He hadn’t been exaggerating to Lyds earlier when he said he was struggling – it wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work, there was just so _much_ of it. He’d been accepted to CU Boulder as a American Studies/Folklore major, and quickly added Anthropology and History majors on top of that. Which had seemed a great idea at the time, but now, in his senior year, it was all starting to pile up on him.

Stiles was pulled out of his internal pity-party by the jingling of the bell above the front door, a rare sound at 1 a.m. on a Saturday, when most of the usual college crew had cleared out for the greener pastures of frat parties or illicit keggers in the dorms. Stiles felt himself perk up as he spotted the familiar dark hair and scruff of his favorite patron. True-to-form, the man ordered a hot soy latte, but instead of ordering it to go and heading back into the night, he sat down at a table nearby and pulled out a highlighter and a battered copy of P. Adams Sitney’s _Visionary Film_.

Stiles was familiar with the book – he’d taken an avant-garde film elective the year before though, if he was being honest, he’d found it was more enjoyable once he’d started sneaking edibles into the screenings (even though secretly he’d thought Brakhage would approve). He closed his laptop slowly, considering. If he got shut down with this guy, maybe he could justify not doing his work. Or, if he miraculously _didn’t_ get shut down, then he could definitely justify not doing his work!  

Stiles coughed into his fist, frowning when the TDS didn’t even blink. He coughed louder, more pointedly. Still nothing.

Sucking in a big gulp of air, Stiles coughed again – too well, in fact, sending him into an honest-to-god coughing fit as he choked on his own spit.

When he came out of it, Stiles found it’d had worked; if, by _worked,_ you meant the beautiful stranger/future love-of-Stiles’-life was staring at him with a combination of mild horror and disgust that, in any other situation, Stiles would have found equal parts comical and endearing.

Stiles grimaced and tried to play it cool.

“It’s ah, spicy,” he said, gesturing to the ceramic mug in front of him.

A little line of puzzlement formed between the man’s eyebrows. “Your coffee…is too spicy?” he asked after a beat.

Stiles waited a little bit longer than acceptable to answer, lost somewhere between the man’s disconcertingly pretty eyes and surprisingly pleasant tenor. Some distant part of him noted how the frown line deepened fractionally and immediately got to work imagining tracing it with a finger.

The man gently cleared his throat and Stiles snapped back to attention.

“It’s ah, yeah. It’s the beans or something. Maybe they’re from, like, Chile or someplace. Get it? Chili. Heh.” Stiles snapped a pair of finger guns in the man’s direction, before grimacing, immediately regretting every decision he’d ever made.

“Right,” the guy said, a small smile forming as he returned to his book.

“Hey, uh,” Stiles blurted out, eager to keep the conversation going, “P. Adams Sitney right? What a guy. Big on the…the mythopoeia and all that.” He waved his hand about gesturing at…the entire avant-garde, he guessed?

“You’ve read it?” The man asked, eyebrows raising slightly.

“Yeah, in Dr. Jameson’s avant-garde seminar last year.”

The man smiled, softening the lines of his face and doing away with any thoughts Stiles had had about possible bad-ass biker fantasies. Well, maybe not all. “I’m TA-ing that class this semester.”

Stiles perked up. “You’re a graduate student?”

The man nodded, slipping a book mark in before closing the cover. “PhD candidate, actually. Dr. Jameson’s my advisor.”

Stiles scooted slightly closer, wincing as the chair scraped loudly against the floor. Damn modernist aesthetics!

“That’s so cool! What’s your thing? I mean, what are you working on? Your dissertation or whatever.”

 “Mythopoeia, actually,” the man said chuckled softly. “Exploring Brakhage’s use of myth and memory to create identity, mostly. Focusing on the 60’s right now, but we’ll see.”

“Oh dope, _Dog Star Man_ and stuff, right? That was a trip.” Stiles leaned forward excitedly. “I do myth stuff too! Sort of. More folklore, you know? And some English. And history, too. But right now? All about that myth.”

The man’s eyebrows raised incrementally as he nodded, gamely.

“I’m actually supposed to be working on my senior thesis right now – it’s on the use of classical myth by the modernists, mostly James Joyce but I might throw some Gertie Stein in there, maybe my man Masson.” 

The man smiled. “No Pound?”

“Not THAT asshole again,” Stiles groaned. “My advisor keeps telling me I can’t _not_ talk about him, but I don’t really see the point in spending more time on some fascist, anti-Semitic, self-important douchecanoe, you know? My _babci_ didn’t escape the Nazis and leave the old country just so I could spend my college education writing about Ezra-goddamn-Pound.”

The man threw back his head and laughed, a true belly-laugh that made Stiles fill up with warmth.

“I agree,” he said, turning back to Stiles with a wide smile. If Stiles melted a little bit at the sight of those slightly elongated bunny teeth well, that’s no one’s business but his own. “I’m not a Pound fan either – can’t stand the guy. I did my undergrad in English and constantly got in to fights about him. And Hemingway too.”

“A real dick,” Stiles agreed, nodding sagely.

“I’m Derek,” the man said, leaning over and sticking out his hand.

“Stiles Stilinski,” Stiles said, revelling in the feel of the TDS’ – no, Derek’s – hand, warm and slightly rough in his own. “Glad to meet a fellow dick-hater.”

Derek laughed again. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say that,” he said with what was – if Stiles was not mistaken – a distinct _twinkle_ in his eye.

“Well, I guess you can’t be too dick-averse, given your field. Genuine question: what’s with all the dicks in the avant-garde? I mean, surely there are other ways to be ~subversive~ .” Stiles asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“A question for the ages,” Derek answered solemnly.  “Actually, Carolee Schneeman is pretty firmly anti-dick at times. Did Dr. Jameson screen any of her films last year?”

Stiles shook his head. “No – are they worth seeing?”

Derek smiled, the twinkle reappearing. “Depends – how do you feel about cats?”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “Why does that question feel less innocent than it sounds?”

Derek’s grin grew wider. “Let’s just say Carolee was really, _really_ into her cats.”

Stiles leaned back in mock-horror. “My God – is she a furry?”

The other man barked out a laugh, a sound Stiles was fairly sure he could get used to hearing, I don’t know, every day of his life?

“For real, I’d love to see one of these purportedly anti-dick films. Are they in the cinema library?” Stiles asked, settling back in his chair.

“No, but I have a few of them at home.” Derek said, ducking his chin a bit. “I could show them to you, if you want?”

“Do mine ears deceive me, or was that a date proposal?” Stiles asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Depends on your definition of a date.” Derek said, a teasing smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I define it as a dude who might, possibly, potentially be into dicks requesting another dude who is _definitely_ into dicks – and also not-dicks, for the record – over for obscure modernist films and chill.” 

“Then I guess it’s a date.”

Stiles smiled and held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

He plugged his number into Derek’s phone – a delightfully battered iPhone 3 Stiles resisted making fun of – while Derek did the same with his, warmth settling in Stiles’ belly as he slid the phone back into his pocket.

“Now lovely Derek, I await your text with bated breath. But we should probably both get back to what we actually came here to do”

Derek groaned, rubbing a hand over his hair as he glanced askance at his book. “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be infuriatingly right far too often?”

 “Because you have a wonderful sense of intuition, pal. But consider: sooner you finish, sooner you can have me over for that date.”

Stiles grinned. “And if it goes well? Who knows, I might even let you buy me a soy latte sometime.”

“How did you—” Derek asked, looking down at his cup with an adorably perplexed look on his face.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stiles winked. “I have my ways.”

Stiles opened his laptop and clicked on the tab for his thesis, beginning to type with a small smile on his face. Yeah, this semester might kick his ass, and there’s a strong chance coffee will genuinely replace all the blood in his body, but something tells him that it might just be okay, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> did I write this instead of finishing my statement of purpose on myth and avant-garde film????? nope, whatever gave u that idea


End file.
